


These Fragile Flowers

by thevorpalsword



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Body Horror Elements, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Found Family Feels, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hanahaki Disease, Historical References, M/M, Misunderstandings, Protective Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Protective Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Protective Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Protective Nile Freeman, Temporary Character Death, Vague Historical References, dying for love multiple times is doable when youre an immortal, everyone is very protective of andy okay, i feel like hanahaki is its own content warning, times two, when she lets them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:01:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29091699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thevorpalsword/pseuds/thevorpalsword
Summary: Hanahaki doesn't affect every love lorn person in the world. No one knows why it settles on some and not others.(A look at the two times Hanahaki struck members of The Old Guard.)
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 48
Kudos: 213





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warning: This story contains graphic depictions of illness and dying. Please proceed with caution and remember to take care of yourselves.

Nicolò doesn't know anything about flowers. Which is all he can think at this moment, staring at the bloody pink petals in his palm. He doesn't know what kind of flower has taken root in his lungs, but he knows why it's growing. As much as he’d like to deny it, as much as he’d like to wish it away – he knows.

"Nico, are you ready?" Yusuf calls from behind him. The former crusader jams his bloody hand into his bag, hiding the petals and roughly wiping his palm on yesterday's clothes. He quickly belts the top closed and slings it over one shoulder before picking up his longsword and belting it on. One last glance over the cot finds him meeting the eyes of a stranger one bed over in the small, cramped room where they'd rented a bed for the night before.

She's looking at him and there’s a sneer twisting her features into something ugly. She casts a scathing look at him, and then another over his shoulder where Nicolò can hear Yusuf cheerfully chatting with another patron of the boarding house. He doesn’t know how she knows, what intuition she has that has caught him. Could have been anything, he thinks to himself viciously. Could have been the besotted way he stares at Yusuf when he’s not looking. Could have been the way he leans into the man’s space without even thinking about it. Could have been the way he relaxes against Yusuf when they have to share a small sleeping space, like last night.

Or yes, it could have been the handful of  _ bloody _ flower petals he just tried to hide.

He glares at her until she looks away. She sniffs at him, like he’s not worth her time or attention and goes back to doing whatever she’d been doing before.

Nico finishes straightening his clothes and hustles past Yusuf and out the door.

X

Here's the thing about Hanahaki – it just gets worse.

His first flower comes up about a month later. A tightly closed bud without a stem. This one is white, and has little petals all pressed together, their edges tiny wavy lines of perfection.

Nicolò throws it into the river as they pass over a bridge. He woke up this morning with Yusuf pressed tightly along his back, his warm breath falling across the nape of Nicolò's neck. It was awful.

It was perfect.

X

"I don't understand it, where does the cough keep coming from?" Yusuf asks, looking equal parts concerned and perplexed while Nicolò struggles to recover from a harsh bout of hacking and wheezing. He hides the fact he's spitting out petals and buds by turning his back to the fire.

"I think I must be catching something, and when it gets bad enough to nearly kill me, I heal and cough up the clots? I'm not really sure," Nico lies. He doesn't look at Yusuf while he does, just takes some water from his water skin, swishes it in his mouth and spits it out.

"What are you catching though?"

"Pick a plague," Nico replies with a shrug. Hanahaki isn't, strictly speaking, a plague. But it is a disease.

Yusuf frowns. "Maybe we shouldn't continue north. What if we went east instead?"

Nicolò shrugs. "It makes no difference to me. What about the women? We're almost positive they’re up past Samarkand. If we head east we may miss them."

"We'll go to Baghdad. The city is extremely distinctive; if they can dream us the way we dream them, they'll know it, I'm sure."

Nicolò twists the water skin around in his hands. A nervous tic that he wouldn't even indulge, normally. Yusuf stares.

"Baghdad. Alright, we can go to Baghdad." Nicolo relents. He doesn't say anything about the wealth of medical knowledge that Baghdad is famous for. Yusuf doesn't mention it either.

X

Nicolò had only seen a sufferer of Hanahaki once. One of the knights he'd known in the Crusade had it. And it had killed him before they ever made it to the Holy Land. The man had been from Provence and spoke Occitan, which Nicolò understands for the most part.

"We can't be together. It would be the ruin of us both," the knight tells Nicolò one morning when the man's coughing had awoken them. Nico stares at the half open flower, a gorgeous bloom with delicate petals and a lovely deep red color that almost looks purple. It is half crushed, covered in blood and bile.

"I'm sorry," Nicolò says uselessly.

"I'm not. I love someone. I'm not eager to die of love, you understand, I think that's...well, despite what all the chivalric nonsense says it's not a great feeling to know this is what kills me. But, in the small hours, when I can't sleep because I can feel the flowers growing  _ – _ I think to myself: at least I have loved. At least I have done and felt that. It is a joy."

He'd begs for someone named Matteo at the end. Nicolò never tells.

They bury the knight in Anatolia. Nicolò still says prayers for his soul to this day, almost 30 years hence. He doesn't know who Matteo was, or is, but he also prays that whoever he is, he knows how deeply he was loved.

He doesn't tell Yusuf.

He tries very hard not to call himself a fucking hypocrite.

He fails a lot.

X

Baghdad is a relief in many ways. There's so much to see and do and be distracted by. Nicolò somehow manages to keep his bloody flowers out of sight. Nico finds himself pressing a hand to his chest, trying to push back against the writhing in his lungs. He breathes shallowly, tries not to move too quickly or run anywhere. He doesn’t know what else to do. Nicolò can’t find the words needed to explain, to describe, to process how he’s gone from hating this man to loving him so fiercely.

The concern in Yusuf's eyes only grows.

X

A doctor in Baghdad gets famous, claiming to have a cure for Hanahaki. Yusuf tells him about it over dinner one night, eyeing Nicolò carefully across their table that's not really a table, just a salvaged piece of wood they use as a tray on the floor.

For a split second, Nicolò feels like he must actually be dying. Because this, this is the worst thing he's ever felt in his entire fucking existence.

_ He knows. Oh, God in heaven, he knows. _

It's like horror, and terror, and the deepest pit of shame he's ever drowned in crawling up over his head. His skin feels hot and shivery everywhere. His scalp itches, and every piece of clothing presses on him like little blades.

"That's interesting to hear. How does he do it?" Nicolò asks, and sounds nothing like himself. He sounds like a stranger. His voice is thin, brittle, and shaking. Yusuf reaches out like he's going to place a hand on Nicolò's arm. His face can only be described as "alarmed" and Nico shies away from the touch.

"He, well, he conducts a surgery. He takes the flowers out. It's very dangerous. No one has survived yet."

As small and ashamed as Nicolò feels in this moment, the thought of someone literally ripping the flowers, the evidence of love from his chest, stirs true revulsion in him.

"He literally tears the heart from them, you mean?"

"I suppose if you wanted to be poetic  _ – _ "

"You're a poet, Yusuf," Nicolò points out quietly. "This doctor is surgically going in and cutting the feelings of love from people. That's what he's doing."

"He's trying to save their lives," Yusuf says. "I just thought, we could seek out this Doctor, there's no risk of you dying on his table, after all, and then  _ – _ ”

"What? Let him cut my heart out?"

"Nicolò, it’s not your _ heart – _ and you'd heal  _ – _ "

There's so much going on inside Nicolò, he can't figure out which way is up. His hands are clenched so tight, and he can't breathe deeply, can scarcely breathe at all. He thought he was hiding it so well but no, Yusuf has been trying to be kind. Because that's what Yusuf  _ does _ , he just tries to be kind. How long has he known, Nicolò wonders. How long has he been politely ignoring Nicolò's growing feelings? And how uncomfortable must he feel at this point, that he's bringing this solution up?

To encourage Nicolò to let a doctor just  _ – _ cut the love and adoration out of him.

"I would," Nicolò replies. He hasn't looked up from his hands, clenched in his lap since Yusuf has said the word Hanahaki. He doesn't look up now. "I would heal. But I’m afraid I’d be different after. What if...what if taking the flowers takes the feelings?"

Nicolò doesn't want to go back to the person he was before he loved Yusuf. Not because he thinks he would be a bad person, or because he thinks that he'd somehow start hating Yusuf again  _ – _ but because of the simplest of reasons. It makes him happy to love Yusuf. Not for sacrifice, not for guilt, not for envy nor want, and not for martyrdom. Just for its own sake.

The knight on the road to the Holy Land was right. It is a joy to love.

"But you wouldn't be in so much pain, Nicolò," Yusuf says gently. "You can scarcely walk up the stairs to our room without having a coughing fit. You have to lay down on your belly to even sleep."

"When did you know?" Nicolò interrupts.

"When we were going north, to Samarkand. You coughed up a flower in your sleep. I was on watch."

Nicolò covers his face with his hands.

"I'm sorry," is all he can offer.

"You have nothing to apologize for. You can't control how you feel Nicolò."

"This doctor seems to be able to," Nicolò replies bitterly, and hates himself for it. Yusuf does not deserve his bitterness. Yusuf is only trying to be kind.

"I could just wait," Nicolò says, changing tacks completely. "It will kill me soon, I can feel it. Maybe I'll come back and it'll be done."

"But," Yusuf begins, and this time it's his voice that sounds like the voice of a stranger. Small, thin, and shivering. It's such a surprise that Nicolò looks up without thinking. Yusuf is looking at his own hands, limp in his lap. He's pale. 

"Nicolò, what if, what if this is the limit of our gift? What if this kills you? What if this is something we cannot overcome? You've been afflicted for months already, longer I think than I even know. And you haven't healed. Our gift hasn't just healed you of this entirely. What if it can't? What if this takes you from me? What if I have to watch you die for real?"

Nicolò wants to say that he's had this for longer than he thinks anyone has. Most people succumb in just a couple of months. Nicolò coughed up his first petal almost half a year ago. He wants to tell Yusuf not to worry. He wants to say it will be alright.

He can't. And it's not.

Yusuf looks at Nicolò and he's crying. His dear friend, the heart of his heart is weeping silently, speaking around his tears for Nicolò because he's scared.

The flowers in Nicolò's chest bloom, and choke him.

His air is cut off entirely. A wild pressure builds behind his ribs and he swears he feels them break under the strain. The pain is terrible, the worst he's felt, and he slumps to the side, unable to hold himself up under the onslaught. He falls and twists instinctively onto his back, every muscle seizing in protest.

"Nicolò!" Yusuf is suddenly there, cradling his head, protecting it from the floor as he convulses.

"No, no, no, no, Nicolò, please," Yusuf cries out. And God, Nicolò wants to comfort him, but his heart is bursting, his lungs are popping. His throat bulges with the crush and press of flowers and stems and roots.

There is a moment. A moment when he feels his skin split and flowers, leaves, vines erupt from his chest. When the blood sprays across Yusuf's face and his love looks so afraid, so heartbroken, so destroyed  _ – _ there is a moment when Nicolò is scared. Scared this may actually be how he dies. Scared he may leave Yusuf alone. Scared.

Nicolò dies of love in the arms of his love.

It's not sweet, or peaceful. It's gory, bloody, and awful.

X

Yusuf clutches him in his arms. There's blood everywhere, and Nicolò isn't moving, isn't breathing. Yusuf wants to scream, he wants to scream so badly but it's all locked behind his teeth. He's afraid if he opens his mouth he'll never stop screaming. All he can manage is a low keening moan of pain without end.

The flowers have bloomed in the center of his chest, tight clusters of brilliant yellow. They are covered in blood and tissue and viscera and they are the ugliest things he's ever seen. Nicolò is pale like a corpse, a terrible portent. His eyes are glassy and distant, like he’s not even there anymore.

What does he do?  _ Oh Allah _ , what does he do? Does he take the flowers out? Does he do exactly what Nicolò was so repulsed by the very idea of? Does he cut his heart out and hope he will heal and come back? Will Nicolò forgive him if he does? Whoever he loves, it is steadfast and deeply felt  _ – _ can he be responsible for taking that away?

Yes, Yusuf decides. Yes, he can carry that burden if he must. If there's even a chance Nicolò can heal from this and come back, he'll take it. Nicolò can go back to hating him; he'll be alive to do so. But he can't let Nicolò  _ die,  _ he just... _ can't _ .

They've each died in horrible, graphic ways, but Yusuf will never forget the moment he wraps a hand around the base of the flowers. The way they feel in his fist. Cool and green, where the blood and flesh of his friend is still hot to the touch. Yusuf can see Nicolò's mangled heart. The muscle twitches feebly still, a phantom beat.

Nicolò jerks in his arms, like a bolt has gone through him. Yusuf can't imagine the pain, can't imagine the agony he's in, there's no noise, he can't speak, he has no lungs to draw breath. But he closes a hand around Yusuf's wrist. His pale eyes focus suddenly, find Yusuf's gaze and beg him not to.

There's a rush of emotion, something unlocks in his own chest, something he'd stuffed down for years, afraid to look at it. Afraid to consider it. Afraid of what it means to love an enemy, a Crusader, a killer.

"Nicolò," Yusuf says. "Nicolò, please. You are  _ – _ you can't heal with it in you, I have to take it out. Nicolò please. My love, my heart, please. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but you have to let me. Don't make me live without you, please."

There's something happening but Yusuf can't look away from Nicolò's face because his eyes have gotten so wide. Yusuf is afraid, he can't look down  _ – _ what if his heart has stopped completely? What if the wavering edges of Nicolò's ribs aren't trying to meet and heal anymore? What if this is it?

But the flowers he still has in his hand are shifting and Yusuf looks out of reflex.

They're dying.

The flowers are dying, wilting away into nothing at speed before his eyes. They're shriveling up and turning to dust. Yusuf watches as Nicolò's heart reforms, his lungs rebuilding, his ribs reaching around to almost lovingly enclose his chest. Nicolò  _ breathes _ and then coughs, blood and spittle and dust escaping from his mouth. Yusuf helps him turn on his side as carefully as he can so Nicolò can get it all out. One of his hands weakly moves across the floor and grips Yusuf's tunic tightly.

Nicolò flinches through several more audible bone cracks as his ribs finish healing over. Blood splatters onto the floor beneath him while he gasps and coughs and spits and then gasps again. They're both a mess and Yusuf doesn't fucking  _ care _ because he's healing. He's healing. He's breathing.

Yusuf pressed his face against Nicolò's side, curling his body over that of his love's and tries to breathe himself. They lay there, tangled together.

Nicolò finally takes in a deep breath and easily exhales. There's no catch, no cough, not a single hitch. And Yusuf finds he still has tears he can cry.

He grips Nicolò's tunic in his grasping hands so tightly he hears it rip further where it had split across Nicolò's chest. He tries to loosen his grip but his fingers do not obey.

Nicolò shifts underneath him and Yusuf gives serious thought to just holding him there because he's not ready to let Nicolò go. Because where can they go from here? Nicolò now knows the secret Yusuf has carried all this time. Has carried while Nicolò was literally dying of love for another. Knows that he was willing to rip that from Nicolò if it meant saving his life. Knows the lengths he'll go to keep Nicolò alive. Please Allah, let him have just a moment more. One more, please, just one more. One more moment with Nicolò, whole under his hands, safe, alive. Please one more.

"Yusuf," Nicolò speaks and it is his voice again, not the whispery, weak thing it has been for weeks, nor the horrified, thin thing it was just a few minutes ago. Nicolò speaks and it's his gentle tenor that Yusuf had longed to hear again.

"Please," Yusuf begs, weakly. "Just one more moment. Please. I'll leave if you want me to go, I swear I will. Just. Let me hold you a little more."

"Yusuf. Hayati," Nicolò says and that is a word Yusuf never thought he would ever hear from Nicolò's lips and it sends him falling back in shock.

Nicolò is ghastly to look at, objectively speaking. He's covered with blood, and bits of lung tissue, and shards of bone. His tunic is a red ruin. But his face is mostly clear. And he's looking at Yusuf with so much joy in his eyes that he is something divine to behold.

"Where would you go, Yusuf? Where could you go that I would not follow you?"

"What?" Yusuf asks, unable to form any other words.

"I love you," Nicolò says. And he had tears in his eyes. He reaches out and places his bloody, wet hands on Yusuf's cheeks.

"I love you," he says again. And it all slots into place.

_ Oh _ , but they are both absolute idiots.

"I love you, too," Yusuf says dumbly. Nicolò laughs, laughs! and nods. He pats his own chest.

"I know you do. The flowers turn to dust when the love is reciprocated."

"I'm so sorry," Yusuf wheezes.

"Why would you be sorry?"

"Because you have suffered. You have suffered for months because I wasn't willing to be honest with myself. Because I wasn't willing to admit that I had fallen in love with you. Because I was afraid I would betray my past, by daring to want a future with you." The words tumble out without censure. And Nicolò looks at him with understanding.

"Yusuf, it's alright, I understand. It...it wasn't easy for me either. I think...I think it’s why the flowers took so long to grow. This isn't something I feel lightly. It's something I struggled with too. "

"You've been coughing up flowers for half a year."

"And I was extremely upset about it the entire time."

"And yet you wanted to keep them?"

"You can be upset and joyful at the same time, habibi, humans are complex enough for it."

Yusuf thinks of the wild tangle of emotions rioting in his heart and soul right now and thinks that his love may be the master of understatement.

"What now?" Yusuf asks, because he honestly does not know.

"I think we should clean up," Nicolò says. Which is a good point. They are sitting in a huge pool of blood and...other things.

"Yes, yes of course, let me help you  _ – _ "

They end up using each other to stand. Yusuf can't help but run unsteady hands over Nicolò's chest through the rip in his tunic. The skin is tacky with drying blood but completely whole and smooth. There's not a scar or mark. Nicolò takes Yusuf's hands in his own.

"I'm alright."

"You died in my arms," Yusuf croaks. Everything feels so wobbly and impossible. But Nico stands firm and Yusuf is comforted by that.

"I died in your arms the first time. And several times since."

"I've hated every one."

"Even that first one?"

Yusuf thinks about it, gives it the consideration the question is due.

"Yes, if only because it meant you were able to stab me."

Nicolò chuckles and in his wisdom breaks Yusuf's obsessive checking of his person by drawing him into an embrace.

"I love you," Nicolò whispers into his neck.

Yusuf pulls back just enough to kiss the man, unable to do or think of anything else.

His love tastes like flowers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shout out must go to my friend Jaeh. Who appeared in our chat and said "TOG + Hanahaki Disease, GO." and then this ate my brain. I was stuck at work waiting for traffic to die down enough that sitting in my car wouldn't feel like torture and I tapped this out on my phone. Thus, all credit and curses must be directed at her. :D
> 
> Nicky's Flowers: Gladiolus, White Carnation, and Gorse
> 
> This story is complete! I have the second chapter, which features Andy and Quynh ready to go, I just have to finish some final tweaks and have my beta look it over. Speaking of! HUGE thanks to Fuinixe, who painstakingly went through this and corralled all my commas (or lack thereof), corrected my grammar, and just generally polished it to a high shine.
> 
> I hope everyone enjoyed this little 3k diversion, and if you feel the need to express said enjoyment please consider leaving a kudos or comment.
> 
> Y'all stay safe out there. <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: This story contains graphic depictions of illness and dying. Please proceed with caution and remember to take care of yourselves.

People can fall out of love. Happens every day. Wanna know how Andromache knows?

Because on a beautiful day in 1789, she coughs twice and gets a fist full of flower petals for her troubles.

X

It doesn't make any sense to her at first. That's the awful part. Well no, the awful part is Quynh is trapped at the bottom of the ocean dying over and over again. That's the awful part. It's also the gut wrenching, heartbreaking, agonizing part.

This smaller awful part is that it takes her a minute to work it out. The love she shares with Quynh is a part of her identity and has been for more than a thousand years. To question that is to question the sun rising in the east.

She has to question the sun rising in the east. Because the pink petals at the bottom of the wash basin mean one thing: her love is unrequited.

She walks out of the safe house, out across the rolling hills of the Scottish highlands, up to the craggy cliffs of Dunnet Head and jumps off. It's a long way down. It passes in a second. It passes in an eternity. It never stops hurting.

X

Joe and Nicky fish her out, because of course they do.

Nicolò holds her as she cries and coughs and cries and coughs, hiccuping jonquils and asters and bluebells into her hands. Yusuf rubs her back, brings her water, cleans the bloody petals away so she doesn't have to look at them.

It doesn't matter that she can't see them. She feels them. Wriggling in her chest, strangling her heart.

X

She asks Nicolò about it only once, right before she dies of it the first time.

"How bad?" She asks hoarsely. She can't take a deep breath, can't move, or else she'll aggravate the fucking things growing in her chest. Nicolò doesn't even pretend to not understand. He's there, damp cloth in hand, wiping the sweat from her face.

"It was agony," he says quietly.

He's right of course. Actually, agony is a bit of an understatement. Nico's always been good at those.

X

"Andy, it is too close to -"

"I've got at least another two days."

Yusuf looks highly skeptical. She doesn't blame him. Yes, she's already pale and her breath is already pretty short. But she knows her body, she knows the progress of this like the back of her hand, like the handle of her ax. She's got two days left before she'll need to stop and let it overtake her.

"If we go in now, and get stuck or pinned down -"

"Then we'll have to be sure not to get pinned, won't we?"

He frowns at her, because now he's annoyed at her flippancy. He hates it when she's flippant about it.

"There's no guarantee, Andrea. Please, let's just wait until afterwards."

"If we wait until then they will have moved onto their next target and we'll have to start all over again. We know they're going to be at the party tonight, we know the hand-off will happen. This is our chance to not just take the smugglers out but to also find the supplier for the opium."

He's wavering. This has been the work of months, months that Yusuf has had to spend apart from Nico while the other man was undercover within the opium den itself gathering intel.

"Yusuf, I'm serious. I'm okay for at least two more days. That's plenty of time, even if we get held up tonight. At the very least let's hit the party and get eyes on the supplier. Even if we have to let the smugglers move on, at least then Nico can break cover."

Yusuf sighs, tips his head back and looks at the ceiling.

"You're going to go no matter what I say."

"Probably."

"Fine."

It's an utter cock up. It's not one supplier, it's three of them. The smuggler gets away in the confusion when Nico's cover is blown thanks to an eagle eyed bruiser who apparently never fucking forgets a face. Including the one of someone who's _supposed_ to just be another rich opium addict, not a server at the high end party his new boss has brought him to as back up. The suppliers corner the three of them in an alley after a foot chase that leaves Andrea down, gasping, unable to breathe past the stems in her throat. Nicolò dies at least four times, Yusuf two. Several of the bodyguards the suppliers brought get away, screaming into the night. She misses Quynh so much her bones ache.

They have to leave immediately. Yusuf carries Andrea most of the way back to their safe house. He has to carry her into the train later that same night as they escape the city.

She dies in the train car.

X

The plants don't wither. She doesn’t die, or rather, she doesn’t stay dead. And so the flowers live on. They have to take them out. She weeps with relief and joy when she wakes and finds that the love is still there. It was agony to die from it; but it is a hell she cannot imagine living without.

Nicky and Joe have to take the flowers out every time so she can come back.

It seems none of them can escape with their hearts intact.

X

Booker is...well.

He has his fair share of yanking the flowers out of her chest when needed. She suspects he also gets his fair share of nightmares about drowning.

So when he sells them out to a sad eyed intel analyst with a sob story, and a promise for a _cure_ : she gets it.

Down to her bones, she gets it.

But understanding is not forgiveness. And at present, she’s struggling to imagine forgiving him for this. For handing them all over to be experimented on. For giving up Joe and Nicky. For forcing them to watch as the other is tortured. For inflicting their worst fear on them – being separated forever. She’s also not super thrilled at being examined like a fucking bug specimen pinned to a card.

"Hmm, the Hanahaki is only just beginning," the bitch doctor says, looking closely at the image on the computer screen. She presses the wand of the ultrasound machine down hard on Andy's breastbone. It hurts and it keeps hurting. Which is still a fucking novelty. Andy suppresses a cough.

"On a normal human I'd say you have about three months."

Nicolò inhales sharply, and from the corner of her eye Andy can see his face twist with despair. Yusuf rattles his restraints on the other side of him, spitting some truly inspired curses in Maltese. Booker stares blankly at the wall, pale as a corpse, as if he was already dead.

"Thanks for the heads up," Andy croaks.

The bitch looks back at her coolly.

"How many times have you died of it?"

"Too many to count."

"What happens to the flowers?"

They're interrupted by the sound of gunshots. The doctor leaps to her feet right as Nile kicks the door in.

They escape. Andy doesn't have to tell the bitch doctor about the flowers. That alone is worth more than Andy can say, so she doesn't and instead just hugs Nile as tightly as she can in thanks.

X

It's a mess. They're a mess. 

But Andy has barely months left; just a few weeks, really. And so the 100 years they settle on is postponed until...after.

Nicolò won't relax around Booker, won't stop being on guard, always between Joe and the door or window. Joe acts like Booker just isn’t there; as though he is already gone. Nile tries to be a bridge and on some occasions is successful. She leans in hard on the clueless-about-history-facade and asks questions about _everything_ she can think of that they may have seen or been party to. Encourages them to tell long-winded, winding tales. It helps, getting to remember good times. Times they helped. Times they made a difference.

Other occasions it just doesn't work. Booker is silent, or drunk. Nicky is quiet and cutting. Yusuf is indifferent, or vicious. Andy is in pain and impatient. Nile is lost or confused. If they're all off at the same time, it's nothing but wounds and unseen scars and hurt feelings.

Andromache coughs up her first bud into the bathroom sink of their safehouse in Bilbao. It’s a beautiful dark pink zinnia.

Nile wakes up with a shout; then bursts into the bathroom.

"Quynh's out. She's out. She's out and she's coming for us."

X

The first time she catches up to them they’re laying low in Hyderabad. She kills Booker, who is on watch. He manages to get a warning off in time so the rest of the group makes it out of the safe house. While Quynh is distracted tearing through the empty house, Booker revives and legs it out of the window, dragging his still healing, only partially attached arm with him.

“They left me!” she howls from inside the house, sighting him out the window.

“They never forgot you,” Booker says back, stumbling, tripping over his weak legs and at least one broken foot. She’s climbing out after him.

“They gave up!”

“I’ve never seen her happy,” Booker says. He’s not shouting over her but she hears him anyway. “Not once. Not really. I’ve never seen a smile reach her eyes. I’ve never seen her fully present. She was always, always, at least in part, with you.”

Nile pulls up on a stolen bike and Booker climbs on. Quynh shoots him in the back as they flee. He dies, slumped over Nile’s shoulders. When they catch up with the others, Andy has a fist full of budding flowers and tears in her eyes.

X

The next time is in Tokyo. Joe stays behind. It goes about as well as they expected.

“We searched for years!” He shouts at his sister, his beloved, brilliant, viciously fast big sister.

She slices right through the tendon in his leg and he goes down with a groan. Quynh lands on his chest, knee pressed into his sternum, forcing the breath from his lungs.

“You left me down there,” she hisses.

“She’s dying, Quynh. She’s dying, don’t take her from us before she has to go. Please.”

She cuts his throat. “We’re all dying, Yusuf.”

Quynh doesn’t see the bullet that takes her out, but she knew it was coming. Nicolò wouldn’t have left Joe behind to face Quynh alone. When she comes to in a pool of blood, Yusuf is gone.

X

Nicolò tries next. The summer sun is unforgiving as they stand there on a rural road in the Utahan desert. They’d only managed to just barely get Andy out of the house they rented in the literal middle of nowhere before Quynh had appeared on the horizon. Copley hasn’t figured out how she’s tracking them and can only do his best to stay ahead of her.

“Sister, please.” Nicky says through bloodied teeth.

“When did you decide to stop?” she asks, yanking the dagger he’d slipped in between her ribs out and tossing it aside. Nicky rolls over and onto his hands and knees with a groan. The bullet wound in his chest makes a wet sucking sound as he tries to breathe through it. The offending round drops onto the asphalt.

“1800,” Nicolò admits. “There was a storm; the ship sank right from under us. We ended up separated. It took us three years to find each other again.”

“And that was it?”

“Yes. We couldn’t risk losing each other on top of losing you.”

“Who called it off?”

“Quynh, please.”

“Who?”

“She did.”

“That’s what I thought,” she hisses. She picks up her sword again; and Nicky rises to meet her.

X

London again, but they’re only passing through onto another safe house. Andy is pale, her breathing shallow.

Nile sees her before anyone else, and instead of staying on the train car, Nile steps smoothly back off onto the platform. Joe looks up just in time to see what’s happening before the train takes the rest of them on.

“You’re the new one,” Quynh says pointlessly. She’s dressed sharply, long red coat, elegant heeled boots and a perfect red lipstick.

“I am,” Nile replies. She’s only got her fists, one good knife and some can do attitude at present. Oh well, she’s done more with less.

The fight feels almost like training. Quynh gets in under her guard and leaves her gasping from the hits, but never follows it up with a killing blow. Nile in turn doesn’t draw the knife or try and toss Quynh onto the third rail.

“You have to stop, please,” Nile begs at one point, furiously jamming her shoulder back into the joint and yanking off the rest of the sleeve of her shirt that had gotten torn in the last bout. Quynh stands up, brushing her hair back and thumbing a thin line of blood from under her nose. Nile is extremely proud of that hit.

“Why should I?”

“Andy’s dying. We don’t have much time left with her. A few weeks, maybe. You chasing us is making her worse, faster.”

Quynh tilts her head to the side, like a curious bird.

“Weeks? Child, Andromache is thousands of years old. She’ll live another thousand.” Quynh says as though she is reciting a fact of the universe. Bodies in motion will remain in motion. Bodies at rest will remain at rest. Andromache the Sythian will live another thousand years.

“She’s mortal now,” Nile explains firmly. “And she’s got Hanahaki.”

There’s a pause. A real pause where Nile can see that information hit Quynh. Hit her and she, for the first time in this world wide wild chase, feels it.

There’s a new question on her face. She’s clearly afraid to ask it.

Before Nile can decide to answer it for her or not, another train pulls in. Quynh sweeps herself onto it the moment the doors open. Nile thinks about going after her; considers taking the fight onto the train and further. But Quynh’s hand is shaking when she reaches up to steady herself on one of the hand rails. The doors swish shut. The train passes on.

X

They end up in Rome.

Joe and Nicky have an actual proper house here, not a safehouse, but somewhere they actually settle in and live from time to time. There’s enough room for all of them, which Nile deeply appreciates. It’s been nothing but crappy motels, hastily rented AirBnBs, abandoned houses and shitty safe houses since they left Merrick and that debacle behind. The library in their house alone is enough to send her into raptures, and Joe gleefully shows her all the art he and Nicky have collected there.

Andy is sitting in one of the window seats, overlooking the quiet street below. She’s paler than she should be. Nicky keeps plying her with cup after cup of lemon and honey tea, trying to keep her coughing under control. She doesn’t speak much, her voice sounds raspy and thin. Booker sits nearby, book in hand, quiet. He’s been carrying her from place to place recently because she can’t get up the stairs herself anymore.

He’s the one to notice when Andy stiffens. He’s the one to get up and check the window and see Quynh standing in the street below, looking up at Andy with a strange look on her face. Andy digs her nails into Booker’s arm.

“I’ll go. I’ll talk to her, Andy.”

“Take me down with you,” Andy whispers. “Please.”

“Joe and Nicky will murder me. Murder me dead.”

“So we both get what we want.”

“Mean, boss. That was mean.”

“Take me with you.”

“No.”

“Booker.”

“No. She’s not there yet. She’ll hurt you, kill you. And you know it.”

“It’s her right.”

“What about Joe and Nicky? What about Nile?” Booker brushes a gentle hand against Andy’s cheek. “What about me?”

Andy looks up at him with wet eyes. There’s still so much fierceness in her. So much left unbroken. Unbowed. But she can’t make it down the stairs if he doesn’t carry her.

And he’s not going to.

“Sorry, boss,” he whispers and goes outside to see Quynh.

When he gets to the street, she’s still looking up at the window Andy is sitting in.

“She’s really dying, then.” Quynh says.

“Yes. Hanahaki.”

“Me?”

“You.”

“How poetic.”

“I guess.”

“Has it killed her before?”

“Many times.”

“When did it start?”

“I don’t know,” Booker says honestly. “She’s had it for as long as I’ve known her. I first died in 1812.”

“What happens to the flowers?”

“What?” Booker asks, surprised.

“The flowers. What happens to them after she dies? Hanahaki flowers die after their person dies. What happens to hers?”

Booker for the first time considers lying to her. She finally turns away from staring at Andy to look at him, her eyes are narrowed like she could hear that thought.

“What happens to them?” she repeats.

“They...nothing. Nothing happens to them, really. We...have to remove them from her so she can heal. And they’re just...flowers.”

“What does she do with them?”

“She plants them,” Joe interrupts from the doorway. Nicky is standing just behind him, still, quiet, and on guard. Nile appears in the window next to Andy.

“I have a list if you’d like to see it,” Joe says. There’s an edge of something in his voice, though he’s trying to stay as neutral as he can. Grief, anger, fear, love. So much love.

“You kept track?” Booker asks, stunned.

“Of course,” Nicky replies for his husband. “Of course we did.”

“How many times?” Quynh asks them.

“One thousand, three hundred and ninety-four.” Joe says. “I know every flower that has killed her and where each one is planted. Andy has grown you a garden, sister. And if you want, I promise, I will take you to every single one someday.”

Quynh meets Joe’s eyes, and then Nicky’s. They’re both crying.

She’s surprised to find she is as well.

This time, she leaves so they don’t have to.

X

The white flowers shaped like little stars that fall from her mouth have a name but she can’t be bothered to remember it right now. They’re coming out stained red anyways. She hooks her fingers past her lips and digs them out of the back of her mouth.

One comes up with a stem that’s as long as her hand.

Nearly there, then.

She’s gotten good at getting them up quietly. Had plenty of practice over the years. It’s well past midnight. Nile is keeping watch downstairs. Booker is passed out asleep on the floor, for once not drunk. He hasn’t been drinking much the past few days, too scared to get drunk and miss...well, miss the final goodbyes. Joe and Nicky are in the corner; they dragged their mattress in from their room and laid it out so they could sleep in here with her. All three of her little brothers slumber on, unaware.

Quynh steals in like a shadow, and Andy is waiting for her. The window sill doesn’t even offer up a creak in protest as she climbs in. She settles on the bed cross legged. There's a knife in her hand, but she’s not holding it threateningly, more like it’s there for her own comfort.

“Quynh,” Andy breathes; and even though so much about this moment pains her, there is a small bit of her heart that eases. Andromache is afraid of very few things. But one of the things she has feared for more than two centuries is that she would never again look upon the face of the woman she loves and speak her name.

“Hello, Andromache,” Quynh replies, her voice soft. None of the boys so much as stir.

Moonlight spills in through the open window, illuminating them both. The white, half-crushed flowers turn almost a silver blue. Quynh picks one up and turns it slowly in her fingers.

“Do you remember dreaming of Nicolò, when he was suffering from this?” she asks.

“Yes, vividly,” Andy replies.

“We couldn’t believe how stupid they both were being.”

“They’re still stupid about each other,” Andy says, the corner of her mouth tilting into something like a smile.

“Was that a comfort, or a torture?”

Andy shrugs, “Both, at once.”

“Did you ever hate them for it?”

“No, never. It hurt, but it was good hurt. When shit was bad – I could look at them and know there were still wonderful things in the world.”

Andy’s breath shudders in her chest, she clamps a hand tight over her mouth and heaves against her palm a couple of times. It comes out as a couple of sharp huffs, but still quiet enough that the boys don’t wake. Carefully she peels her hand back, and quickly and efficiently reaches into her mouth and yanks out another couple of flowers. Her chest squirms, and Andy tries to stay still, waiting impatiently as one more crawls up her throat to bloom at the back of her mouth. She pulls that one out too. The stem is the longest yet.

When she looks back at Quynh, the other woman seems a little paler, but it’s hard to tell for sure in the moonlight.

“Will you come back? For them? When I’m gone?”

“Would they even have me back?” Quynh asks.

“Of course they would. Joe and Nicky love you; they have mourned you just as long as I have.”

“Even though I’m killing you now?”

Andy huffs, annoyed.

“You’re not killing me, my feelings are killing me.”

“Will they see it that way?”

“Nicky’s died of this himself, so I think they’re probably the two who get it the most.”

“Grief makes people do crazy things,” Quynh points out with a wry smile.

“That’s true of everyone in this room, not just you.”

They fall silent, just looking and drinking each other in. Quynh reaches out and sets the knife aside, laying it on the window sill.

“What do I do, Andromache?” she asks.

“Stay.”

“For how long?”

“Until the end?”

“How much longer is that?”

Andy nudges the most recent flower with her finger.

“Morning, most likely.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

There’s something complicated happening on Quynh’s face. Something that despite the centuries of experience, Andy doesn’t recognize. It looks a little like grief. A little like the rage from before. A little like fear. And just a little like the love Andy knows Quynh felt for her once. But her face shutters and it’s all wiped clean. Quynh sits in the square of moonlight, stoic once more.

She carefully collects all the bloody flowers and sets them on the window sill next to her knife. Quynh then settles herself against the wall next to the window, legs outstretched, and gestures simply towards her lap.

“Rest your head a while, Andromache. I will be here in the morning.”

Andy drops gratefully against her love. If this is to be her last night, then she’s going to leap at the chance to spend it with Quynh fully and without hesitation. She doesn’t care if the woman cuts her throat in her sleep. That’s fine, as long as she gets to rest here while she dies.

A delicate but strong hand alights gently upon her hair. Andy wants to cry but knows if she does she’ll start coughing and wake everyone up. She keeps her breathing even and shallow, but doesn’t try to stop the tears slipping from her eyes onto Quynh’s thigh.

She doesn’t think she’ll actually sleep. Not when she has Quynh here next to her, finally. And yet, her body has other plans. Between one pained, shallow breath and the next, she sleeps.

X

The sun rises and Quynh watches the shafts of light appear and then slowly move across the resting forms of her little family. Nicolò is not asleep; he’s been awake since she crawled in through the window. It’s a comfort to know he’s not lost his edge. It’s a comfort to know he’d let her speak with Andromache uninterrupted.

The new one, Nile, is also awake. She’s draped across the foot of the bed with her heels propped up on the wall. She had come in, bold as you please a few minutes after Andromache had fallen asleep. She was completely unsurprised to find Quynh there. Her hand is resting on Andromache’s wrist, counting her heartbeats.

Booker awoke at some point, nearly made a fuss, but quieted when he’d realized that Andy was sleeping in her lap.

Yusuf is the only one who hasn’t stirred yet – which honestly is the least surprising of all the events that have occurred in the past day. That boy could sleep through an actual invasion if he wanted to.

Quynh passes her hand gently over Andy’s hair again, a soothing motion that she’d started at some point in the night and has been unable to cease.

She doesn’t know what to feel. Well, it’s more that she feels so much and can’t settle on any one thing long enough to get a real grasp on any of it. The grief, rage, serenity, fear, joy, despair, fury and yes, even love, all flit about like kites on the wind. They brush against her and then move on. She hasn’t been able to get a handle on any of them. Not now, and if she’s honest, not at all since finally making it back to the surface.

The morning light moves onto Andromache’s shoulder, warming her skin and giving her an almost divine glow. Quynh feels everything pause for just a moment, a crystallized moment where things aren’t suddenly less complicated, or less tangled, but where Quynh thinks she can see through it. See through it to the far side, where a new reality waits. One where she finds peace again.

Andromache sighs at the touch of the sun, but the inhale hitches and then suddenly she’s violently coughing. She struggles to sit up, and Quynh quickly rolls her over. Nile is there in an instant, helping her as well. The flowers are coming quick and fast now; Andy tries to clear them with her fingers, but it’s not working, there are too many. Her back arches into a bow, and her throat bulges grotesquely, the skin squirming.

Nile and Quynh are on either side of her as they hold her down, keeping her from toppling right off the narrow bed. Andy tries to claw at her neck. Suddenly Nicky is there, his fingers are quick and steady and he pulls flower after flower free, casting them aside as quickly as he can. Yusuf presses a steadying hand on Andy’s sternum, a low moan of despair escaping him because he can feel what Quynh and they all can now hear – her ribs snapping. Booker clambers up onto the bed as well, slotting in behind Nile to help her keep her balance as she braces Andy.

They’re all there. And it’s...awful.

When Quynh dreamed about revenge, when she dreamed about getting what she wanted it was always...well, it was like this. Despair. Bottomless and unending despair.

And now that it’s here before her, ready and waiting for her to glory in it – she doesn’t want to.

Her little family.

They’re in such pain. And she wants so desperately for it to stop. She doesn’t want them to hurt. She doesn’t want them to despair. She doesn’t want this for them. She felt it for hundreds of years and she doesn’t want that for any of them. She loves them too much for that.

There’s dust in the air.

Andy is coughing, retching, dust bursting from her lips.

“Roll her over on her side, quick!” Joe yells, moving away some so they have enough room to turn Andy onto her side. Andromache clutches blindly at whoever is closest; Quynh can’t really even tell who’s she holding onto at this point. The flowers turn to dust before their eyes, falling apart and withering in seconds. Andy whimpers, curling forward as though to try and protect her chest, but doesn’t let go of any of them. Her breathing is ragged with pain, but she’s _breathing_.

“What’s happening?” Quynh asks, afraid.

Nicky is crying and laughing. Yusuf has bowed his forehead over Andy’s hand that has ended up clenched around his forearm and seems to be praying fervent thanks over and over.

“The flowers are dying,” Nile breathes in disbelief while staring at Quynh. Booker is staring in wonderment at her too.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you love her back, sister,” Nicky says, his voice thick. “The flowers turn to dust if the love is reciprocated.”

“But – her mortality – she’s – ”

Andy yelps under them when several ribs snap back into place.

“Mother _fucker_!”

Nicky actually falls off the edge of the bed and is laughing so joyfully in a way Quynh doesn’t think she’s seen him do ever. Yusuf is pressing kisses to the back of Andy’s hand. Nile is hugging Booker, who seems to just be completely lost amongst all this joy, tears streaming down his face.

Andromache pushes herself up, and when she rises on her hands and knees to look up she looks right into Quynh’s face. Quynh doesn’t know what to do, to flee, to harm, to stay, to scream – 

Andy cups a hand around the back of her head and pulls her forward with a strength that Quynh hasn’t felt in _centuries_ and she doesn’t try to stop her fall – she goes where Andromache pulls her, always has, why did she ever think it would be different?

Quynh falls into Andy’s arms like she’s never left them. She doesn’t know if it’s her body that remembers or her heart, or something else. All she knows is that she’s there, that Andy’s heart thumps under her ear, her breathing is easy and clear, and she’s sobbing into Quynh’s hair.

It’s an impossible crush of limbs after that. Yusuf is there in an instant, crowding in behind Andy’s back, and then Nicky is behind her. Nile presses in close somehow, and Booker is dragged in as well, despite his best efforts.

Quynh was afraid the press of bodies would send her spiraling back into her memories of the ocean, but there’s just so much happening. Yusuf is praising God in a dozen languages, Nicky is somehow still laughing, so much joy in him it overflows. Nile is shouting in English about miracles, and Booker is just whispering his thanks over and over again into Quynh’s arm. Sunlight streams in through the open window.

Quynh does the only thing she can: she pushes closer to Andromache.

Her love smells like flowers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A HUGE thank you again to Fuinixe for beta'ing this chapter for me. <3
> 
> Andromache's last flower: Edelweiss
> 
> Thank you all for sticking around or returning to read the last installment of this little diversion. I really appreciate the comments and kudos I received on the last chapter. If you enjoyed this, and feel like letting me know, please leave me a kudos or a comment!
> 
> Y'all stay safe out there. <3


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